In 2010, an employee of HomeNurse Inc. went to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and filed a charge claiming she had been discriminated against because of race, age, disability, and genetic information, and that her employer had retaliated against her. It turned out the complainant was not disabled, is white, has no pre-existing genetic conditions, and is under the age of 40. It also turned out the employee had been fired for posting confidential patient information on her Facebook page.
The EEOC responded to the charge by raiding the company “as if it were the FBI executing a criminal search warrant,” according to HomeNurse. Commission officials showed up unannounced at a small office in Georgia where no senior staff worked, waved around subpoenas, intimidated staff, and began going through files. The raid continued, with EEOC staff snatching information, until company attorneys were able to telephone the EEOC’s regional attorney to call a halt to the raid.